Текст книги "Houston, 2030: With Proper Legwork"
Автор книги: Майк Мак-Кай
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“Easily. Although I don't remember when we're back from the Beat at four o'clock.”
“OK. So I, for no reason at all, get a gut-driver, and make you a quarter-inch hole.”
“You're a dangerous woman!”
“You have not seen me in a rage. Next, we have three options. The first option. You're still alive. Covered in blood, you bail out of our shack and…”
“And stumble upon some neighbor's kids. ‘What's wrong with you, Uncle Kim?’”
“Exactly! So, the first option does not work for us. Discard. Option two. I stab you to death real quiet, no one heard anything. I pop up from our shack with the dead body. Next?”
“What ‘next’?”
“Well, if it's me, specifically: a legless girl on a skateboard, I have no chance at all. So don't you worry: I will not kill you at home. I will come up with something more exiting.”
“No doubt you will. Just smoke a couple of your favorite To-Ma-Gochi.”
“Besides the jokes. Let say, it's not me, but two strong men, and each with two legs. OK, these two men grab your body, leave our shack, and…”
“The same Patch kids! ‘Uncles, who are you? And what's wrong with our Uncle Kim?’”
“Spot-on, Watson! Or if they know one of the persons with the body, the kids run through the Patch and yell: ‘Uncle Kim's dead! Auntie Kate stubbed Uncle Kim!’ Do you think I can get very far on my skate? And even the strong men with healthy legs will not be able to get away with the body. They may drop the body and flee, but we will have two hundred witnesses.”
“Yeah. And four hundred very different descriptions…”
“To hell with it if they are all different! In our case, nobody had seen anything at all! And nobody dropped the dead Mister Chen at the Patch. Hence, our second option is also a total dud. More coffee?”
“The coffee is cold. By the way, where did you get these yummy brownies?”
“Light the Primus, sybarite. Mister Coyote does not like cold coffee! We waste all my salary on kerosene, you know? And about the cookies, I am not telling you. Your Mom will be jealous… OK, just kidding. But I must swear you to an absolute secrecy. It's a dark secret.”
“OK, I swear. Policeman to policeman.”
“Accepted, partner. So if instead of racing on your bike, somebody rides sensibly, on a skateboard, with two nice wooden blocks, once upon the time… OK, OK, I will make the epic saga short! Just in front of our Beat, yesterday I stumbled upon a one-legged vet with a vendor cart. He bakes these wonderful brownies and sells them hot. For me he even gives a special discount, because I have one leg less… than him! If you behave, I'll buy more of these brownies, promise. By the way two options of our version-three are gone. Do you see the third?”
“I don't.”
“And if you look a bit more?”
“I still don't see it. By the way, presently I'm looking at the Primus, so our coffee doesn't spill.”
“OK, listen in. Don't turn, watch the Primus. The third option is: instead of dragging your dead body out, our two men place it inside some large container. But this container must be of a decent size, such as a wardrobe or a chest.”
“Can they dismember the corpse?”
“Does not work for us. There will be not just few drops of blood as Tan said, but all the floor covered.”
“I agree. Hey, I like the wardrobe idea! But in our slums… Not very often people move furniture.”
“Today in the China-Five, did anybody move?”
“As I understand it, no. Although, we must double-check. The trainees probably missed it altogether.”
“Woxman is a buffoon. Why did he send the trainees to talk to the neighbors? Wait, there is a fourth option.”
“What is it?”
“I've slipped some drug in your coffee. Those magic mushrooms. While you're off, I punch a hole, drain enough blood on the rag, then stitch and bandage your wound. You wake up, but still under influence. I make a hypnotic suggestion that the screwdriver hole is such a wonderful thing to have. You're under hypnosis…”
“Bullshit. Option five. You dial a flying saucer on your mobile phone and your alien friends drag my body out through the fifth dimension.”
“Yeah, total garbage. Most importantly, if I arrange the cover-up with the little green men, I don't need to run to the Police. The fourth option is also eliminated. The conclusion, Watson. My pipe didn't help much. We have no working versions, except maybe those movers with a wardrobe.”
“The conclusion, Holmes, coffee has boiled. Let's finish it and go to bed. I have to get up at four tomorrow morning.”
“I thought Tan is on-duty tomorrow. Or did you give him a day-off? For his screwed-up birthday?”
“Tan's birthday is still screwed-up. He will be on-duty at the Beat. And I have to go and search for the missing body. Woxman wants me to assemble two hundred volunteers by seven-thirty. We must perform some massive area search, he said.”
“Your Woxman is positively a buffoon. How do you collect two hundred people on Saturday morning and with no prior notice?”
“He's not my Woxman. He's Woxman for life. Mister Deputy Investigator knows how to spell ‘impossible’. But its meaning he hasn't grasped yet.”
“Hey, can you take me tomorrow? As a volunteer?”
“No way.”
“Why not?”
“Firstly, there will be Woxman. I don't want you two to meet. He is already unhappy about you, because you've called the Dispatch, and so he has ended up with this case in his capable hands. Secondly, if I bring a skate-bound legless vet and try to pass her as a volunteer, I will get a demerit.”
“A demerit – you're getting it anyhow. Where are you going to find two hundred people?”
“I will manage. If there is no choice, I will gather some teenagers. It's Saturday, so they're not at school. Let say, from ten-year-old and up. The instructions say nothing about using the kids, so it must be legal.”
“And you will have ten-year-old girls running around and looking for the dead body?”
“Well, I admit the ten-year-old girls don't fit quite well in the picture. But the ten-year-old are still more useful than legless.”
“You're a low-extremity racist! This is profound discrimination! On the basis of legless.”
“No discrimination, whatsoever. You're a child of concrete jungles. And as such you constantly forget that here in Houston we have a well-developed agriculture. The search will be commenced at the fields, including all the irrigation ditches and the rice paddies. No way your skate can work in such places – physically. Do you want to crawl on your hands, neck-deep in mud? By the way, it's the perfect time to tell you one thing every slum policeman must know. The! Dark! Secret! Of! Houston! Naturally, I have to swear you to an absolute secrecy.”
“The Dark Secret of Houston? Wonderful. OK, I swear. As Road Runner to Wile E Coyote.”
“Accepted, Runner. Listen in. The farmers in Houston have a conspiracy.”
“A conspiracy?”
“Yes. They developed a secret weapon, all-mighty concoction, which will eventually consume the city… with all the suburbs… turning us all… into agricultural zombies. They call it ‘organic fertilizer’… But really it's… shit! Mostly human shit. Tons and tons of shit. Are you scared?”
“OK, I'm scared and I surrender. You're not a racist, despite your profound low extremities. I let our well-developed all-agricultural kids deal with the ‘organic fertilizer’. Wandering barefoot in shit is not my dream job.”
Kim shifts the dirty dishes to the side and spreads his futon on the floor, “Let's catch some sleep, Runner. And don't even dream about being agricultural tomorrow…”
Kim Den Gir, Deputy, Harris County Sheriff’s Office.
Tan and I meet at the agreed spot on the highway. My partner is going on-duty, so he has arrived properly dressed and with the full gear: his baton, his gun and everything else. In striking contrast, my attire consists of a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, and from the Police uniform I have only a cap. On my neck I put a plastic water-tight box with my badge, the cell phone, and some money. The back pockets of my shorts hide the rest of my law-enforcing equipment: brass knuckles in the right and handcuffs in the left.
I've selected the shorts for one reason. Collecting two hundred adult volunteers on Saturday morning is not just difficult, but totally impossible. All more-or-less fit adults in the Asian slums have something slightly more important to do than helping the Police to look for a missing person. For example, trying to earn enough to feed the family in the evening. Fortunately for us, on Saturday the kids are not at school, so I hope to enlist the local children. Now imagine that you wake up at six AM. At the door, there is a policeman in full uniform, with a baton and a gun, who asks if your kids can volunteer. Naturally, your son will be more than interested to check my Glock-17 and the rest of my equipment. But you, being a responsible parent, will immediately find some urgent chore for your kids. Guns? Batons? Handcuffs? Chasing criminals? Better be safe than sorry. To make the recruitment successful, the local deputy must come without any visible weapons, and wearing shorts instead of the uniform. Nothing out of the ordinary, simple and boring search through the fields. If it's so safe, why don't we help our Police?
For few seconds I ponder how to assign our single Walkie-Talkie. It would be logical to have it with Woxman and me at the China-Five. Without the cell phone coverage, having a radio is very convenient. On the other hand, Tan may be called to some emergency, in one of those ‘temporary unavailable’ GRS areas, and he may need the radio way more than us. If there is no obvious reason to do one way or another, the officer must follow the Standard Operational Procedures. Some brass (no finger-pointing) even believes that the officers must follow the Procedures always. Mrs Reason must shut up, she has no rank in the Police Force. I sigh and surrender our old Motorola to my partner. Simultaneously, Tan receives my strict instructions not to be our radio operator. If somebody calls Woxman don't even think jumping on your bike to play a delivery boy. Call a pedicab to the Beat and send with a message. Woxman can find fifty bucks for the pedicab driver, no sweat. After my fully-instructed and fully-equipped partner departs to the Beat, I ride towards the Chinamerican Patches.
At the Patch-Five everyone already knows about the ongoing Police investigation. The Emergency Response cart with a real running horse is impossible to hide, especially from the curious Chinamerican kids. Besides, Woxman's trainees have marked their presence by asking their stupid questions, and Python Tom, in his blue scene coverall and with his aluminum CSI box looks just like an astronaut from Sci-Fi comics. Fortunately enough, yesterday I've got a brief second to whisper some proper instructions to the trainees' ears.
“If a single soul in the Patch learns about the blood and the gut-driver,” I've told them, “I am not going to investigate who can't hold his mouth shut. I shall rip the balls from two very specific, known to all of us, trainees. Deputy Investigator Woxman, with all his might, will not be able to help these poor bastards, understood?”
As far as I can tell by asking few indirect questions this morning, two specific trainees have kept their mouths shut, no problems. The Patch population believes that Mr Victor Chen has reported his father missing. To cover the trail completely, I've shared with some key local gossip-makers (“only for you ma'am, I know I can trust you such a secret”) that Victor Chen and Deputy Investigator Woxman have spent the night checking all the medical facilities this side of Sheldon Reservoir. Obviously, the people don't need to know that Victor Chen has spent the night in the Station slammer, as the primary suspect in a murder case.
I've managed neither two nor even one hundred volunteers, but my morning recruiting session results turn out above the initial pessimistic expectations: five adults and sixty-seven teenagers, of which fifty-five are boys. Exactly at half-past seven, I line up my barefoot search party in front of His Excellency Deputy Investigator Woxman, may he fry himself in hell for eternity.
“Deputy Kim, why you are not wearing your uniform today?” Deputy Investigator raises his eyebrows, “And why, for god sake, you have no shoes?” Well, he may not understand the practical psychology, and surely he has no idea how to collect volunteers in the slum, but why does he start the day with a confrontation?
“We will be searching in such places, sir. A bit on the dirty side, you know. Personally I prefer to save my uniform for some better occasion. As for you, I strongly recommend to leave your boots at the Patch and roll up your pants. On the rice paddies, the boots are not very practical. You end up falling in the mud.”
Woxman ignores my proposal. I don't insist. If somebody has no common sense, even the best advices are useless. “And if I remember correctly, yesterday I've asked for two hundred volunteers, but you only have fifty. At that – only kids, goddammit.”
“Quite a bit more than fifty, sir. Seventy-two all together, including five adults. All we can do at such a short notice. Naturally, if you want, you and I can do another loop through the Patch. If you convince five more people to join our search party, I shall give you… let say, one hundred bucks. But hence we don't want our bet to be one-sided, let's also do this: if we can't add five more volunteers, you've got to give me one hundred, deal?”
“OK, Deputy, let's not waste time on stupid bets. Seventy-two volunteers are probably enough.” He is well aware that there is no way he can summon five more volunteers, and he does not want to lose one hundred. “Where do you want to start the search?”
Oh, finally! The first reasonable sentence through the entire morning. After all, Woxman is not a total dummy. Just one more guy with near-zero experience but overinflated self-esteem. Honestly, I have been expecting the worst: that he would start giving orders himself, alienate the locals and screw up the search.
“I suggest we start with that thicket in the West.”
“Why not from the vegetable beds?”
“If you have only few hours, no way you can hide a body in there. There are some exceptions, but on average the Chinese here wake up before sunrise and treat each little cabbage as the first child in the family. Those obsessed veggie owners will positively see the beds being tampered with. It would be as obvious as dumping the corpse at the Patch common grounds.”
“Good logic, sir. Well, let's proceed with the thicket.”
OK, and proceed we will. First thing first, the volunteers' briefing. Ladies and gentlemen! Our good neighbor, Mister. Chen Te-Sheng, fifty-four years of age, has been reported missing. I trust everybody here knows him quite well. Mister Chen left home yesterday, presumably after four PM. Very likely, he had a medical emergency of some sort, for example a heart attack. We must find Mister Chen! Now listen carefully. If someone finds a body: do not touch anything, repeat: no touching! Step back and report the find immediately. If someone finds anything unusual: a garment, or a bag, or something like this, do not touch it. Step back and report the find immediately. Is that clear? Step back and report immediately.
Now special instructions! For the boys. Do not chase small animals! Do not look for birds' nests! And for God sake, leave the snakes alone. The snakes don't attack you unless you step on them, right? Is everything clear? Questions?
What if we find the old man alive? Easy. If he is conscious, bow politely and say hello! Ask if he needs any help. If he is unconscious, do the CPR! No, wait! You don't know much about the CPR. Who knows? You, sir? From the Army? Excellent! Boys and girls! Uncle Nathan will be our dedicated paramedic. Call Uncle Nathan for the CPR, OK? More questions?
Can you bang from my gun? Do you see I have my sidearm with me today, young man? No, no, you cannot bang from the sidearm of Mister Deputy Investigator. Why? Because for each bang he has to write a report, that's why! I also have to write such reports. One bang, two hours of paperwork. Absolutely no fun, believe me. Well, if any of you finds Mister Chen, I will trust this good scout to disassemble and clean my Glock-17, agreed? Yes, I will allow this hero to touch my handcuffs too! What? Of course, my handcuffs are real! We don't have no toys in Police! OK, boys, the other questions you will ask at some later date. Line up for the starting point! Chop-chop!
Twenty minutes later, the line is combing the undergrowth. Woxman and I walk behind, enjoying the cheerful shouts of our young volunteers and providing overall command and quality control. I carefully push tall grass with my bare feet. Fourteen years after the Meltdown, all the metal and plastic garbage has been collected, but in the thicket like this one may still encounter a broken bottle. Woxman stomps the grass with his army boots. Admittedly, for the forest the boots are quite useful. Perhaps, I have been a bit overconfident leaving my tire sandals at home.
“I admit, the boys are better suited for this type of work,” the Deputy Investigator says. “The adults don't give a damn about the dead body. Instead of searching, they would be thinking about their veggies, or the next trip to the 'Fill, or about their shops, or whatever else they have here.”
“I believe we have a pretty good cut,” I nod, “Enough adults to keep the boys under control, and enough kids to keep the search enthusiastic. In about an hour, we will be done with the thicket, and can start on the main thing – the ditches.”
“Ditches?”
“The irrigation ditches. The most probable place. To be frank with you, if I had to get rid of the dead body, I would do exactly this: stick it in a ditch.”
“Ah! So why did we start in the thicket?”
Another child of concrete jungles! But of course: he is from the Western slums, on the other side of the 'Fill. They have no agriculture in there, just recycling workshops.
“We started in the thicket, sir, because at eight in the morning only bona fide masochists can clean the ditches. We must wait for the sun to rise a bit higher.”
He should try it himself once – just for his education: stand waist-deep in cold water and shovel heavy silt. Through our school years, my little brother and I had plenty of such experience. We had to clean ditches and carry water for two or three hours every day after school, on Saturdays – all day long, and even a half-day on Sunday. Admittedly, before my eleventh birthday, I also was a child of concrete jungles, one hundred percent. A refined city dweller: from the upper middle class neighborhood, attending a posh British private school. A straight-A student, nicely packed in navy-blue jacket, shiny black shoes and with Eton straw hat! But then came the Meltdown. My father was shot dead by robbers. My mother had no choice but to grab my brother and me and run away from snow to the South. And here in Houston, the posh private school boys had to acquire some very different skills, shiny shoes off, head-first in the mud. In fact, on a hot summer day, the ditch-cleaning and water-fetching are not unpleasant at all. At least in comparison with all the other slum kids' chores. Weeding veggie beds is easy but damn boring. But what really sucks is cow-dunging. You don't know what the cow-dunging is? Collecting and drying the cow dung – for fuel!
“I've got to ask you, sir,” I begin extracting information from the Deputy Investigator, “Are we positive the dead body really exists?”
“The CSIs checked the blood from the screwdriver. It's human, A-plus type. If there is human blood, there must be a dead body.”
“And did they check the son's blood? I mean: Victor Chen's?”
“He's zero-plus.”
“This means… They're not father and son, are they?”
“This means absolutely nothing. Python said: it depends on what blood type Victor's Mom had. He started mumbling something about genetics and probabilities, I didn't understand much.”
“Still, it's possible to determine the father. By the DNA test, right?”
“Yeah! As if our Major is going to sign for a DNA kit! His favorite song: the budget is tight. Well, if we find the body he may allow the DNA check… On the second thought, if we find the body today there will be no DNA. We will use the face recognition software and the fingerprints. The fingerprints are cheap.”
“What did Victor Chen say?”
“Nothing, goddammit! He decided to use the Fifth Amendment,” Woxman spits in front of his shiny army boots.
“Did he ask for an attorney?”
“He wisely refused. Said: for a real lawyer I have no money, but I am ready to give a little to your free shit attorney, so he stays out of this business. As far as possible. To be honest, I would say the same. The free pettifoggers are no damn good.”
“So… There may be no dead body at all?”
“Shit if I know. What about the blood? Human blood? Tom phoned through the private practices and hospitals. Nobody came in with a screwdriver hole. As the matter of fact, nobody of the Chen's age came in with any knife hole or bullet hole yesterday.”
“Too bad.”
“Freaking bad.” He spits again. “If we don't find the body, we will have a dead case.”
“And if we find?”
“Also no good. A dead case too. The gut-driver has no fingerprints.”
“But Chen himself brought the gut-driver to the Beat!”
“So what? As I said yesterday. If only you and Kate took the written statement! But without it…”
“Kate can state under oath what Victor Chen told her at the Beat.”
“It will not work, Deputy. Shove up your ass the statements of your legless cripple.”
Our Deputy Investigator is very strange. As soon as you believe you can talk to him in civilized manner, he says something offensive or stupid.
“Hey-yo! Who do ya call a legless cripple? Wanna bloodied nose?”
“Oh, I am so sorry, Deputy,” Woxman backs up.
For a second or two I ponder if I should give him the bloodied nose irrespective of his apologies. About my ass I'd swallow it with no second thought: we're not at the White House diplomatic reception, and I am not the Ambassador General of the Politically Correct Republic. But why, for God sake, he's called my wife a cripple? Well, Kate has no legs, so what? The United States are at war with half of the world, so in every third family we have a disabled vet. And talking about my Kate, she is not that disabled. On her skateboard she can go faster than most people with two good legs. Fetching six gallons of water – on her skate, believe it or not. And all the rest: cleaning, dish-washing, cooking… Well, scratch the last one – the cooking is not her strong point. But her missing culinary skills have nothing to do with her missing legs. Besides, she is a fellow Police officer, Woxman should have some professional respect.
The last hurricane and the floods – Tan, Kate and I built an improvised raft, and went around the Slum saving kids. Kate got herself the Lifesaving Award instead of the Medal of Valor, but only because at that time she was very new to the Police, the second-week trainee, so what. Still, way better than our hero Deputy Woxman, who rescued printers and computers at the Station! And with all the above, my Kate has much better brains that our brand-new Deputy Investigator Woxman! Woxman is a damn cripple himself, no gray matter in the head.
“I can't say how sorry I am, sir,” Woxman mumbles after an uneasy pause. “I do apologize for my words. It's so stupid of me to call Kate… legless.”
“For the ‘legless’ you don't need to apologize at all. Kate doesn't mind. How else do you call a person with no legs? But never ever call her a cripple, OK? Just to be sure, could you be so kind to avoid any disability-related definitions in the future? Your apology is accepted.” My temper cools down. We can get by without giving this idiot a bloodied nose.
“I will avoid. No more disability-related definitions. To be honest, I was a bit upset you two did not take the written statement. Unfortunately, Missis Kate Bowen, with all due respect, could not be the prosecution witness. She could state in the court that Victor Chen appeared at such and such time in your Beat office with this particular bloodied rag and this particular gut-driver in his hand. And whatever Chen was saying to her at that time, any half-competent defense attorney would smash to smithereens.”
“But Victor Chen told me the same thing, on the way to his house.”
“The same problem. He told you, he didn't write it down. You know what is going to happen? At the trial, Chen will demand a Mandarin-to-English interpreter. And through the interpreter he will tell the jury: the Police officers at the Beat misunderstood me. Due to my poor English! Then the defense will call you and Kate. Do you speak Mandarin, Deputy Kim? Are you fluent in Mandarin, Missis Bowen? End of the story.”
“And what if Victor Chen did not kill his father? What if it was someone else?”
“Who cares? It's a dead case, anyhow.”
Naturally, who cares? Sending an innocent man to the gallows is no big deal. Woxman only cares about his first independent case. He must show results! There must be a court conviction, whoever the poor bastard is.
So bad there is no cell phone coverage. Would be real nice to call someone and ask for advice. At the Station they do have some experienced officers: the FBI Special Agent, the Chief Medical Examiner, our sergeants. Even Python Tom will do. Both Woxman and I have zero experience in the murder cases. It's not like through my five years with the Police I have not seen any murders, but beat deputies are not to investigate any serious crimes. Our specialty is armed robberies (strictly with no casualties), theft, con artists, domestic violence, unlicensed prostitution and drunk misdemeanor. And in the murder cases, our role is reduced to mere helpers: to guard the crime scene, to interview the neighbors, to search for the body – as we do today… Woxman, with his six years of night shifts at the Station, has even less experience than Tan and I. Presumably, they assigned him to this case because the case looked like a no-brainer. Two Chinamen had a family fight. The son stabbed his Dad with a screwdriver and ran to the Police with a confession. But the case turned out way more complicated…
***
The lunch time is approaching, so our search party slowly returns to the Patch. We have done everything imaginable, thoroughly combing the grounds within one and a half mile radius. The boys look much disappointed: none of them will be cleaning my Glock tonight. The body has not been found. As the matter of fact, nothing of importance has been found, despite we have checked every ditch and every rice paddy, and even poked a pole into the communal latrines. As a by-product of the search exercise, the boys caught two coypu rats and killed one snake. Two families in the Patch-5 will have ‘rabbit’ for dinner tonight, and someone lucky will get an oriental delicacy plus a great snake-skin belt in the bargain.
Woxman stumbles along the dirt path totally deflated. More than anything he resembles now a skinny kitten, which has miscalculated a jump and ended up in a ditch. Well, our Deputy Investigator ended up in the irrigation ditch for real. When one Chinaman shouted: “I have it! Looks like a body!”, Woxman even didn't bother to take his boots off. The slippery mud worked exactly as I predicted in the morning, and the brave policeman plopped into the murky water. Naturally, there was no dead body. Woxman's trophy was a rotten snag. For the rest of our search, he kept telling me that it was a crafty trick, just to see how this poor gullible Station deputy was going to struggle in the ditch. If it was set by one of the boys, I could believe it. But the snag was discovered by an adult. Why would a serious man trick a policeman, half of his age? Volunteer's imagination ran wild, no other explanation required.
Besides the jokes, if you come to check the ditches and rice paddies, why do you wear pants and boots? My grossly reduced uniform, for example, is way more practical. The shorts have dried up in minutes, not a bit worse than in the morning. With my Police baseball cap on, and with my badge clearly visible in the water-tight box, I look like some real Police officer, and not like some… poor lost kitten. I've learned a thing or two during my barefoot childhood, unlike some Station buffoons, no finger-pointing intended.
“Do we have a plan, Deputy Investigator?” I ask. I know that Woxman has no further plan whatsoever, but it's nice to be polite.
“I propose we go to the Station, what else? Try Victor Chen again. Maybe, he decides to give a statement, after all.”
“Riding bikes in this heat? I have a better idea. What if I talk to the locals and borrow you some suitable rag? We can wash your pants and hang them to dry. I suppose you boots also need some cleaning and drying, are they not? And while the things are getting dry, we can inspect the potential crime scene once again.”
“Great idea, Deputy Kim,” naturally, he doesn't want to waltz into the Station looking like some poor kitten.
Have you seen the Highlander Scots' outfit? Our Deputy Investigator now resembles one of those fine human specimens. Above the waistline – the Police uniform jacket and the Police cap. In the middle – a belt with his gun, baton, handcuffs and all. And below – watch this! A kilt! Well, not exactly a kilt, just some old oilcloth, but with the real tartan pattern. The attire is completed with hairy bare legs. The Highlanders have no use for socks and shoes! The only thing: the Highlanders have no use for underpants either, but Woxman has refused to remove his underwear. So much for all my efforts, we've failed to produce a proper McWoxman.
The cross-dressing complete, Deputy Investigator gets out of the shack, and all the Patch kids burst out laughing. The adults smile too. Even that legless beggar at the corner tries to laugh, but only manages a hoarse cough. Terrible sight: a man in a wheelchair, his hands and face all wrapped in soiled bandages, eyes covered with cracked sunglasses. Behind the chair, there is a girl, about eight, barefoot, dirty rags instead of clothes. The poor bastard's daughter, or some other relative? As I pass by, I pull a couple of dollars out of my box and drop into the beggar's tin. The Slum Rules are for everybody. The girl mumbles: “Thank you, sir”. Freaking wars! What do the US want in all these endless mexicos, ukraines, and saudi arabias?
